1176 Bluestripe for only $12,500

Hehe

They both look right to me, in terms of parts, wiring method, etc.  The LA-2 looks unusually clean on the face.  But.....man have I seen some incredible Les Paul and Western Electric amplifier fakes, you'd have to be a super expert to spot them, casual enthusiast wouldn't know.  

An overpriced boat anchor! LOL

The only thing I can even begin to think of that would warrant a blue stripe original costing that kind of money would be the fact it has the old original transformer....... I mean everything else is out there to rebuild these, and even specs out much better.

The Don Classics 500 version was so close to how an original blue stripe sounds it was almost scary. Design around modern components proves you don't need to spend $12k on something because it's in CLA's rack. If I remember correctly it was really him that caused the price on these to skyrocket and the one he raved about was F$*#ed up.

Let em spend that money if they want, the guys using Capi's Xformer version are just sitting back laughing.

Well, honestly if I were buying an old one, that's the one I'd buy. It's my favorite in all of them, it's probably the most versatile of them all. 

And really man, when you hear an original one it's not like the curtains to heaven part and angels start singing..... If you've heard the remakes like the hairball and even listening to UAD stuff, you know what a Rev A 1176 sounds like. I mean it's special knowing I've seen and used the real deal, but I'd never on earth buy one for more than $3k or whatever they would cost today, the Don Classic's one I'm telling you is scary close to the sound of an old Rev A. 

Well actually back then it was all done with DOA's, now that he's put the transformer in there I've heard it's even better.

Jeff's compressor is a FET compressor, most FET compressors are going to do the same thing or something very similar to an 1176. The compression is very similar, but what I would add about Jeff's is that his doesn't suffer from the severe pinching a lot of 1176/FET compressors suffer from. That is one way to separate good 1176 emu's from bad ones IME. Jeff's FET comp is probably the best out there.

Original 1176's costing money like this is the territory of early Star Wars toys costing a fortune; it's not that they are rare, it's that they are well known and popular. You can go buy one any day of the week, and there's a lot of other people doing the same.

Yes. It's done with an input transformer now, that's more to the 1176 input. 

Damn I wanted a matched pair of those. 

I did mean gain...12dB of transformer gain change in the 526-XFMR and 4dB in any 1176.  Lots more 'sound' from the transformer with more gain change.  526-XFMR is easily the furthest away on a chart of the three 'types' 1176ABCD, 1176GHK/1178/FC526, FC526-XFMR, at least as far as the front end contribution goes.   As far as input mechanism sonic impact, 1176D and FC526 are easily closer together.  Then you go down the rabbit hole of the rest of the circuit, how does it compare sonically.....that front end veers one way in the comparison, everything else veers another.  

I haven't looked to see yet, but I know the DOA version could take something like +29db before it clipped, some crazy freaking number. I wonder if the Xformer version does the same? I know it was impressive as hell when I had mine. I could blast a tube pre into that sucker and it'd take it like nothing at all.